Software Metrics
Software Metric
Software metric is a measure of some property of a piece of software or its specifications. Since quantitative measurements are essential in all sciences, there is a continuous effort by computer science practitioners and theoreticians to bring similar approaches to software development. The goal is obtaining objective, reproducible and quantifiable measurements, which may have numerous valuable applications in schedule and budget planning, cost estimation, quality assurance testing, software debugging, software performance optimization, and optimal personnel task assignments.
Software metrics are numerical data related to software development. Metrics strongly support software project management activities. They relate to the four functions of management as follows:
1. Planning - Metrics serve as a basis of cost estimating, training planning, resource planning, scheduling, and budgeting.
2. Organizing - Size and schedule metrics influence a project's organization.
3. Controlling - Metrics are used to status and track software development activities for compliance to plans.
4. Improving - Metrics are used as a tool for process improvement and to identify where improvement efforts should be concentrated and measure the effects of process improvement efforts.
A metric quantifies a characteristic of a process or product. Metrics can be directly observable quantities or can be derived from one or more directly observable quantities. Examples of raw metrics include the number of source lines of code, number of documentation pages, number of staff-hours, number of tests, number of requirements, etc. Examples of derived metrics include source lines of code per staff-hour, defects per thousand lines of code, or a cost performance index.
The term indicator is used to denote a representation of metric data that provides insight into an ongoing software development project or process improvement activity. Indicators are metrics in a form suitable
Software metric is a measure of some property of a piece of software or its specifications. Since quantitative measurements are essential in all sciences, there is a continuous effort by computer science practitioners and theoreticians to bring similar approaches to software development. The goal is obtaining objective, reproducible and quantifiable measurements, which may have numerous valuable applications in schedule and budget planning, cost estimation, quality assurance testing, software debugging, software performance optimization, and optimal personnel task assignments.
Software metrics are numerical data related to software development. Metrics strongly support software project management activities. They relate to the four functions of management as follows:
1. Planning - Metrics serve as a basis of cost estimating, training planning, resource planning, scheduling, and budgeting.
2. Organizing - Size and schedule metrics influence a project's organization.
3. Controlling - Metrics are used to status and track software development activities for compliance to plans.
4. Improving - Metrics are used as a tool for process improvement and to identify where improvement efforts should be concentrated and measure the effects of process improvement efforts.
A metric quantifies a characteristic of a process or product. Metrics can be directly observable quantities or can be derived from one or more directly observable quantities. Examples of raw metrics include the number of source lines of code, number of documentation pages, number of staff-hours, number of tests, number of requirements, etc. Examples of derived metrics include source lines of code per staff-hour, defects per thousand lines of code, or a cost performance index.
The term indicator is used to denote a representation of metric data that provides insight into an ongoing software development project or process improvement activity. Indicators are metrics in a form suitable